Issue 6 cover

The Naming Braid

by Lindsey Duncan

Issue 6 :: Summer 2010 (stories)

We are nameless and voiceless: placeholders, wives and mothers, sisters and handmaidens. Beautiful and courteous, worthy and virtuous, we are the answers to questing hearts—but ourselves, we ask no questions.

In Brethland, a name is history, acknowledgement that the bearer will be remembered. Most men are named at manhood, most women never, even when they inspire great deeds.

When the throne was left to me after my brothers were lost to the beckoning ocean—Surety and Valor, granted their names at birth—I was named Foresight. I was called so because the advisors saw in me wisdom they thought inscrutable. It was safer described as witching whispers than attributed to natural intelligence.

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"The Naming Braid" is roughly 4703 words.

Lindsey Duncan is a lifelong writer and professional Celtic harp performer, with short fiction and poetry in several speculative fiction publications. She feels that music and language are inextricably linked. She lives, performs, and teaches harp in Cincinnati, Ohio. She can be found on the web at LindseyDuncan.com/….htm.